”We use fat more” I scientificly would translate into that pro riders have their aerob threshold much closer to their anaerob threshold (aka LT 1 and LT2 and what more it is called).
When shifting between LT1 to LT2 you also start to change energy source becoming more dependent on glycogen and less on fat.
Basically, two persons could have more or less the same LT2, but different LT1’s. The one with LT1 closer to LT2 have better chance in a 2-3+ hour race to be closer to sucess… after that you can start to discuss things such as fatigue resistence and so on… doing 20 min threshold after 15 min WU compared to 3+ riding is (sad to say) not the same thing
In a previous post I’ve showed Christoph Strasser’s (RAAM record winner) 2019 spring training camp week in Cyprus. Here is 2018 on Mallorca (late spring; this followed a first spring block on Cyprus):
to touch on that, Sebastian Weber brought up a hypothetical situation: Most amateur riders are going to do endurance rides at about 70-75% of FTP, he then brought up Tony Martin with a 400 watt FTP. Those guys are not doing endurance rides at 300 watts as he was saying that’s just too high of an intensity to maintain their volume of training. So by definition, those guys are doing a lot of their endurance work far in to the fat burning zone, even below Fatmax (although fatmax isn’t always at the highest percent of fat being used as a substrate).
Has always seemed to me that people underestimate the things they’re naturally good at, and inflate the importance of the things they have to work hard at. Suspect this tells us more about Strasser than about what’s needed to be a successful RAAM athlete. And that the pool of people doing RAAM would never have worked up to doing something like that in the first place if they didn’t already have outstanding mental strength and resilience.
People don’t realise this but if you do more than 15 seconds near your threshold (the maximum effort you can sustain for an hour) you actually tag back your fat metabolism and it takes 20 minutes to get your body back into its fat-burning zone.
Wouldn’t you be doing “fat burning zone” training by HR and not power? I suspect ‘threshold HR’ and ‘threshold power’ do not occur in tandem.
He does say in the same paragraph:
So at the start of the season it’s good to keep your heart rate and yours watts nice and low.
Just reading the FatMax overview by Jeukendrup who states it can occur in the range of 50-80% HRmax. I’m also guessing that a trained pro is closer to the 80% mark and an untrained amateur is closer to the 50% mark.
Perhaps if you’re utterly untrained. Any higher intensity bout will produce lactate. A key characteristic of endurance training status is the ability to clear lactate. Clearance by oxidation. Lactate is inversely correlated with fatox.
These are “moderately trained” subjects following a 5min bout:
a long interval at high intensity produces a lot of lactate
Exactly, I dont’ think 15 s at threshold is going to get the individual close to 4 mmol/L of lactate. 15 s at threshold for me doesn’t even move my HR more than 3-5 beats per minute, or even change my breathing rate substantially.
I did notice an old post on ST yesterday from Arild Tveiten. He was posting that his athlete’s lactate threshold is around 2.5 to 3 mmol/L, and their LT1 is around 1 mmol/L. This is an indication that they have pretty low VLamax, and thus pretty high fractional utilizations. I would be willing to be that many of these pro cyclists have similar lactate profiles since they are also doing a lot of extensive endurance, almost no sprint work, and lots of medio intensity which lowers VLamax. They desire that high fractional utilization as it is important, as with it will also come the high fatmax and high LT1. The classic riders have to be more all rounders, but the bulk of pro tour riders don’t have absurdly high VO2 max values, they have very high utilization of those values.
Forgive my ignorance, but what function exactly triggers the body’s “fat burning zone” — lactate levels, HR, power, a combo?
Flip side of your HR@threshold example, I can sit on the couch producing 0w and think about a ton of stuff which will spike my HR into threshold territory…does this mean I block my fat burning process?
energy demand. but at a certain intensity you’re body can’t transport enough fat into the muscle. This is a key limiting step in the utilisation of fat. One of the adaptions of endurance training is a higher permeability for fats. Furthermore, a higher intra-muscular fat content which is not affected by permeability restrictions. This is why well-trained subjects meet >30% of the energy demand for 6x4min @82% VO2max from fat, whereas untrained subjects used 100% carbs.
It also makes a difference if early or late in a workout. Early this intra-muscular, non-restricted, pool is available. When it’s empty, only fat from the blood stream is available. And this is limited by permeability of the muscle.
And of course, there are more factors complicating matters.
Key message here is (and this is for maintaining context with the thread, find it sort of funny that only diet/metabolism related posts receive feedback here): elite athletes have
a) a higher intramuscular fat pool
b) higher permeability (mainly because or more blood vessels) for blood stream fat
c) and of course other factors …
This allows them to use more fat at any intensity than non-elites. Which explains partly why they perform better. They have more energy available for any intensity level.
Finally, this also highlights the limitation of these standar FatOx and MaxFatOx tests in the lab. Usually these graded tests are done when subjects are fresh, filled up with glycogen and intramuscular fat. However, how relevant is this to 1 or 2 hours into a workout/race?
My advise: simply ride your bike as much as possible without building up detrimental fatigue. This is the key to develop metabolic flexibility.
yeah, found him in the meantime, too. However, as with Flo Vogel, sort of difficult to make out a pattern. What makes things easier with him is that he publishes his time-spent-in-zones graph. And these look plausible.
I’ve also re-visted Flo Vogel as he just came in second in the Euro XCO champs. After MvP. He did an altitude camp in Livorno about 4 weeks before the race. What’s interesting that he does mainly threshold, sub-threshold work. Almost no high-end stuff. Also, and this parallels Ondrej Cink, overall volume is significantly lower than for the road pros. You hardly every see any sessions >4hours. And OC was racing Cape Epic (though I haven’t really checked his prep for this yet).
I really would have thought XCO guys train more polarised these days. Does not seem so, looks more like the Norwegean triathletes train. And like roadies, their training in-season is largely dependent on the racing calendar. An overall training pattern is difficult to make out.
as sryke said, energy demand plus substrate availability. If Lactate/pyruvate are present in high levels in the cells, that has a faster consumption rate and will be a preferred fuel until levels reach baseline. This is where VLamax comes in to play as it will determine substrate availability.
As for my own example, a small movement in HR indicates that there wasn’t much of an increase in energy demand.
Now I have a question of a different type; instead of asking how the pros train, in hopes of gleaning a few tricks and hacks, should we ask “How Do Really Smart People Train?” to suss out the applicable science of getting faster?
after that you can start to discuss things such as fatigue resistence and so on… doing 20 min threshold after 15 min WU compared to 3+ riding is (sad to say) not the same thing 
